could

face twisted into something like a child’s smile; its eyes grew bright and happy.
“Good. Let’s pack. We have a lot to do.”

Chapter Thirteen
Joseph looked up into the eyes of the man he held over his head. Whiskers Okerry, his face twisted with pain and effort. Above him, ceiling beams burned and gray-and-white flame licked off in search of more victims. All Joseph had to do was hold Okerry a little higher and the man, too, would begin burning.
He didn’t. It didn’t matter that he didn’t want to. He hadn’t been told to.
He exerted himself and heard the meaty crack of the man’s back. Okerry’s eyes widened. From pain, from reali­zation that nothing he could ever do would fix what had just been broken, Joseph didn’t know.
Almost tenderly, Joseph set him in the room’s one corner that fire had not yet touched.
Speak, he told himself. Tell him you would rather be dead than do this. Speak. The words welled up in him. But he could not utter them, could not give them to the dying man as one last comfort.
Duncan wouldn’t let him.
The words got bigger within him.
Speak.
Scream.
Joseph thrashed and heard himself shout. In the first moments of wakefulness, he felt his legs somehow ­hampered by cloth, felt his foot hit the footboard of his bed. Wood cracked and fell to the floor with a bang; the end of his bed collapsed.
He sighed. He’d kicked the footboard off again. He opened his eyes. A little light lurked behind his bedroom curtains.
He should be sweating, the way real men did.
“Joseph.” A woman’s voice from the other room.
Not alarmed—what could hurt him?—he rose and, naked,